NETL invests in federal funding for national lab-led research for air separation

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy is investing US$4 million in federal funding for four national lab-led research and development projects to identify new concepts and technologies for producing oxygen via air separation for use in flexible, modular gasification systems.

These projects are supported through a 'Laboratory Research Call, Technical Support for Advanced Air Separation Concepts and Technologies for the Production of Oxygen', issued in June 2018. The objective is to develop air separation technologies to be used in advanced fossil energy-based modular energy systems that will make progress toward enabling cost-competitive, coal-based power generation with near zero emissions. The air separation technologies developed could eventually find applications in coal-fed, small-scale (1 - 5 MWe) modular gasification-based power plants.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory will manage the following projects:

Advanced oxygen separation from air using novel mixed-matrix membranes – Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho Falls, ID) intends to create a durable, high performing membrane material that dramatically advances current technology by taking advantage of an O2/N2-selective polymer material and minimising or eliminating its loss of performance through the inclusion of chemically tailorable and durable nanoparticles.

High selectivity and throughput carbon molecular sieve hollow fibre membranes-based modular air separation unit for producing high purity O2 – Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, NM) intends to develop and demonstrate a modular air separation unit (ASU) for producing high purity O2 using novel membranes with O2/N2 selectivity. The design will be optimised to minimise compression/vacuum needs and energy losses enabling realisation of an energy efficient modular ASU for integration with a modular 1 - 5 MWe gasification system.

Magnetocaloric oxygen liquefaction system for high efficiency air separations – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, WA) aims to explore the feasibility of magnetocaloric technology as a replacement for compression-intensive cryogenic ASUs. Once the technical feasibility has been demonstrated, techno-economic analyses will be conducted to validate the economic viability.